Midnight Reading
by MegaBadBunny
Summary: He knows he shouldn't, and yet, here he is. (aka Nine finds-and reads-young Rose's diary.)


He knows he shouldn't, and yet, here he is.

(But it's not exactly his fault, is it? If she didn't want him to see it, maybe she shouldn't have left it lying around all public in the open, conspicuous and winking at him and daring him to take a little peek, wriggling its (figurative) hips like a minx in red throwing a perfumed kiss over one shoulder. Never mind the fact that it wasn't lying around in public so much as it was in her room, that it wasn't in the open so much as it was tucked under her mattress.)

The Doctor glances around furtively, even though he knows no one will catch him in the act; the flat is empty of any other living thing, save for him and the dust motes colonizing the space beneath the rug. Rose and her oddity of a mum have whisked off somewhere or other ("a proper girls' night", Jackie might've said, or might not have, as the Doctor might not have been listening) and Jack is goodness-knows-where with goodness-knows-whom, so the Doctor figures he's got a good few hours to himself before anyone returns. And he's got to find some way to occupy himself, hasn't he?

(Besides, it isn't as if he went snooping specifically for it. More like, he snooped, and there it conveniently was. Also, he's _bored_.)

Plunking himself down on her bed—not nearly as soft or plush as her TARDIS bed, he thinks with a smirk—the Doctor opens the book to the first page.

 _Dear dairy_ reads the first line.

The Doctor chuckles. There is no date scrawled anywhere on the page, but the scribbles and misspellings amidst very careful and deliberate strokes tell the Doctor these words were written by someone who had only recently learned penmanship, and was determined to do it well.

 _Dear dairy_

 _Hello how are you? My name is Rose Marion Tyler. It is my brithday today I am 6 years old._

It's almost impossible to imagine Rose ever being so young; far easier to picture her emerging fully-grown and stubborn-willed and jeopardy-friendly straight from inception. But the Doctor tries, and in his mind's eye he can almost see her sitting on the bed—no, lying on it, stomach-down, her sock-clad feet kicking idly in the air. Her hair, unbleached and light brown, would be pulled back into a ponytail, held in place by one of those what d'you-call-it's. A _scrunchie_. Her head would bend down in concentration over the diary as she clutched her pen tightly in her small fist. The Doctor imagines the pen to be pink, glittery, one of those gel-things, hopelessly and wonderfully childish and girly, and his grin broadens.

 _Mummy and me had a party in the park and Lottie and Fred cud not come but Shireen was there and Mickey to and his gran and my grandad Prentis. Grandad brung cake from the store it_ _has_ _had a heart drawed on and my name and there were candels. We had ice cream to. And I had prezents there was a barby and shoes and a new bell for my bike…_

The list continues and the Doctor rolls his eyes fondly. Clearly, six-year-old Rose had decided to commit only the most pertinent of details to memory. He flips through perhaps the first quarter of the diary, pausing at a mention of Mickey here, a drawing of a flower there, and watches as Rose's handwriting grows more confident, her entries more substantial. Her diary is a microcosm of her adventures with mates, days at school, developing crushes, the likeability of some of Jackie's boyfriends and the caddishness of others. At random, the Doctor slips a finger between the pages and opens the diary mid-entry, perhaps a year or two along its timeline.

 _and it felt awful but I didnt say anything bc he was right I dont have a dad but Keisha got angry and told him to butt out and mind his own business. So then Nick laughed and made fun of Keisha bout her mum and I thot Keisha might cry so I punched Nick in the nose and it bled and the head teacher says I cant come back to school for a week. Mum says Im in trouble but she didnt stop granddad from buying me a 99 on the way home and she said next time do a slap its easier on the nuckles._

The Doctor can just picture Rose, eight years old, eyes flashing and stance wide as she bloodies some little twerp's nose with her fist. Now that—that is a Rose he has no trouble imagining. Laughing, the Doctor shakes his head and flips to a later entry.

 _8 Nov 1996_

 _Dear diary,_

 _We went to go see Dad yesterday._

The Doctor pauses, hesitates. He knows what the words mean—they're figurative, not literal, because it would be another eleven years before Rose saw any more of Pete Tyler than old photos and a grave—but the memory of the day nine years earlier still sends a shiver down his spine, clenches something in his gut in a guilty-sick feeling he can't quite explain.

 _Mum told me the story again. She seemed all right definitely better than the last time. I think the photos help. Granddad came to and I don't think he rly liked Dad very much but he was nice about him today nicer than on other days. Afterwards Mum went to drop me off with Mickey but he said she needed me so I went on home and she seemed a little happier but she still cried a bit._

The Doctor wrinkles his nose. Something about Mickey the Idiot doing a good turn makes him grumpy. Who does that idiot think he is, anyway?

 _We had tea and fell asleep in front of the telly. I wanted to make her dinner but there was nothing in and I couldnt find anything in her purse so I went down to Ms Nodd's bc she's out seeing her grandson and I got the spare key from under her flower pot and I looked in her bedroom and found a few pounds and took them. I bought Mum a Chinese from her favourite place and she didnt ask where I got the money so I didnt tell her. I dont think Ms Nodd would know it was me that took it but I still feel bad I just didnt know what else to do. Ill pay her back when I get some money for my bday._

Nice old bird, that Ms Nodd. Much nicer than some of the other tenants on the Estate, with her blue-tinged hair and cheerful smile and withered old hands that freely distribute home-baked biscuits to errant Time Lords who just happen to be handy with a squeaky front door. The Doctor makes a mental note to liberate an ATM of a couple hundred-pound-notes at his earliest opportunity and slip them into her flat.

He reads a few more pages—comfortably silly stuff, all of it, more crushes and rants about school and discussions of celebrities and fashion and Rose's favorite things on telly—until his fingers land on an oddly brittle page, warped in places, buckling. Several of the words are nearly impossible to discern, smudged as they are, and it takes the Doctor approximately .003 seconds to identify the water marks as tears.

(There's no _dear diary_ here, no date. The words simply begin, as if writing anything more than the absolutely necessary would take too much energy. Like it would hurt too much.)

 _Granddad's gone._

The Doctor sighs, and his hearts each break a little for young Rose, curled up in her bed and crying bitter tears into her pillow. Ten years old is far too young to experience the cruelty of such a loss. But it isn't as if it gets any easier at any other age. The Doctor knows that to be painfully true.

 _Had a heart attack. Doctors said he went in his sleep and didn't feel anything. I hope that's true. Mum said he's with the angels now but that's stupid. The angels don't need him we do. I already miss him._

 _Mum can't stop crying. I wish Dad was here._

And there's that feeling again in the Doctor's gut, the squirmy-sicky one. Almost as if his stomach knows he shouldn't be doing this, like his body is punishing him. It was all well and good reading about the fun frivolities of a carefree primary-schooler, but this sort of thing—this is something else. Something deep and personal, a compound fracture of emptiness and hurt. The Doctor knows should stop reading now. He really should.

(He doesn't.)

It takes a few weeks for the mentions of Granddad Prentice to start fading, but eventually, they do, fading away to be gradually replaced by the normality of everyday life. Sometimes months pass between diary-entries; other times, years. The Doctor smiles as he glances over recountings of school days and formals and skipping classes, of Jackie's eccentric cluster of boyfriends, of fights with friends and happy makings-up after, of holidays and gossip and hopes for the future. The day Rose and Shireen fall out over a boy is marked by an obscene amount of swearing and words crossed-out and pencil-punctures dug deep into the page; the day Mickey asks Rose to be his girlfriend is noted with exclamation points and a lipgloss-kiss.

The day Rose meets Jimmy Stone is noted with a single heart that simply reads _Mrs Rose Stone_.

Grimacing at the words, the Doctor forces himself to press on.

 _OMG met this bloke Jimmy yesterday n he was soooo fit_ reads the next entry. _Shireen and Keisha and me went down the pub and he was playing in the band and I thot he fancied Keisha at first but after he asked for my number_ _I kno it doesn't mean nothing so I didn't tell Mickey cos no point in him worrying and he gets so jealous anyway lol_

Awww, poor jealous ickle Mickey, thinks the Doctor. He snorts derisively. Human beings—so quick to such petty reactions. He's very glad he doesn't have to worry about silly things like that.

Still, it's a little surprising when, just a few pages later, things have already progressed by leaps and bounds. _Jimmy kissed me!_ leaps out from the page, followed by things like _Mickey and me had a fight_ and _Snuck out to hear Jimmy play downtown_ and _Went to the cinema with Jimmy and he put his hand up my sk_

Hearts hammering, the Doctor flips past that page before his keen eyes have a chance to read any further. For some reason, the thought of Jimmy putting his hand up anything of Rose's—indeed, of Jimmy or some other fool even thinking about touching her, anywhere, with anything—makes him burn a bit under the collar. Unpleasant, that. Maybe he'd better take a look at Jackie's thermostat, make sure it's doing its job, because it certainly doesn't feel like it.

(Still, he skips the several pages that follow, just to be safe.)

 _said if I walked out that door I'd better not walk back in and you know what screw her. She's wasted her whole life crying about Dad and never doing anything with herself and never doing anything for me. I hate her I would rather die then be like her_

Eyes widening in surprise, the Doctor quickly scans over the next few pages, his concern deepening by the second.

 _love Jimmy and no one can tell me any different and if Mum really knew what love was then she'd understand_

 _Im so glad I'm with him now he gets me like no one else ever has or ever will,_ _him forever_

 _didnt want to take my a-levels anyway not like it means anything out in the real world_

 _moving into a flat together next week can't wait_

 _and I love him but I wish he'd get a job cos the gigs don't make enough n I can't cover everything on my own_

 _came home drunk again last night n wouldnt tell me where he'd been_

 _told me I'd better cough up the rest of the rent by next weekend or else he would_

And then, nothing.

The Doctor frowns. Whatever _he would_ do is left unexplained, torn away along with a whole cluster of pages in the diary, leaving a ragged little scar behind where words and feelings used to sit. The Doctor runs a finger along the page-stumps left in the spine, and wonders.

What could have happened that was so bad that even the memory of it had to be ripped away?

The next entry picks up a few weeks later. It does not mention Jimmy. Instead, the page displays only a handful of lonely words:

 _He was right. I'm so stupid._

It takes a moment for the Doctor to realize that the diary is shaking in his hands. But that's only because he's gripping it so tightly his knuckles are glowing bright white in an attempt to jump out of his skin. And suddenly he's glad, in quite a perverse way, that he has witnessed the destruction of the Reapers firsthand, because otherwise the temptation to pilot the TARDIS back in time to ensure that Jimmy Stone never hurt Rose—that he never so much as existed, never so much as blighted this planet with even a single vile breath—would be so strong that he's not entirely sure he'd be able to stop himself.

Forcing himself to calm, the Doctor skips forward, hopefully to an entry that _won't_ cause his blood to boil angrily in his ears. Now phrases like _moved back in with Mum today_ and _applied at Henriks_ greet his eyes, and he feels the muscles in his shoulders begin to relax.

 _and a sweet ginger boy's started coming round, Mum named him Jonesy_

 _but the new job's not so bad_

 _going out to the clubs with Shireen_

 _Mickey stopped by with flowers today and it was like nothing had ever gone wrong_

 _anyway we're dating again_

 _nothing'll come of it but some blokes won in Bristol last week so who knows, maybe we'll win a little something n I could get Mum something nice_

 _a little boring I guess but prolly about the best I can expect for now_

 _So my job blew up today?_

Now a grin spreads across the Doctor's face, lighting it up from ear-to-ear. _Finally_. Took long enough to get here. Now for the _really_ good stuff.

Fingers tingling in anticipation, he turns the page.

Nothing.

The Doctor flips through the remaining pages, hunting for something, _anything_ , but nothing but a sea of white greets his eyes, winking up at him obnoxiously without so much as a single date or scribble or scrawl to capture his attention. The rest of the diary is completely, utterly blank.

Huffing in irritation, the Doctor sits back, flipping the book closed with a scowl. It makes a certain sense, he supposes, but still. Really? She'll write about ice cream and Barbies and school gossip and Mickey the Idiot but no mention of the TARDIS, no asides about traveling through time and space, no discussion of Dickens or Slitheen or bitchy trampolines or 900 year-old Time Lords taking her by the hand to show her anything her little heart could ever possibly—

 _CLANG_.

"I just found it!" blurts out the Doctor without even thinking, pushing off the bed and whirling round to face Rose's open bedroom doorway. But no one stands there; indeed, if his superior hearing is anything to go by (and it usually is), there's no one within several meters of him, certainly no one in the flat. And the continuing _ding-dang-dong_ bell's sound, ringing at twelve lazy but significant intervals, informs him that his nervousness was for naught—it's just Jackie's old grandfather clock, noisily (and unnecessarily, the Doctor thinks with a grump) proclaiming the time.

It's midnight. Probably Rose and Jackie will be home soon. And probably he shouldn't let them know he was nosing through Rose's diary.

(Even if it wasn't his fault, seeing as they left him alone and bored and unoccupied in the flat, and even if he didn't find what he was looking for—even if he's not entirely certain what that was.)

As he slips the diary back into its hiding-place beneath Rose's mattress, it occurs to him that there are any number of reasons Rose might not be writing things in a diary any more—she forgot it at home, or she's too tired after their adventures, or too distracted, or maybe she's even got a new one aboard the TARDIS, hidden somewhere equally silly. But there's another option too, he realizes; that she's simply too happy to see the need for writing things down, that she is too busy living her memories to think of taking the time to document them. The thought warms him, contentment blooming in his chest, and he leaves Rose's room with a smile, closing the door behind him.

(He still checks her room on the TARDIS just in case.)


End file.
